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	<title>Geek Studies</title>
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		<title>Heavy Expectations</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s spring break, which means it is time to catch up on research—and, being a video game researcher, that means justifying the purchase of a PlayStation 3. The first game I played on the new system got me thinking of Overqualified, a series of humorous cover letters for real job openings posted to the web. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2010/03/heavy-expectations</link>
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		<title>Geek Studies in Philadelphia &amp; St. Louis</title>
		<description><![CDATA[No, I won&#8217;t be returning to my old stomping grounds in Philly this semester, but I&#8217;m there in spirit: Over at Technically Philly, Brian James Kirk offers a Q&#038;A with me about my dissertation research. Thanks to Brian for making me sound significantly more coherent than I remember being on our phone call.
Later this month, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2010/02/geek-studies-in-philadelphia-st-louis</link>
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		<title>Being Realistic About Virtual Loot</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Awhile back, my friend Kai—the web developer and DigiPen grad I mentioned in my previous post—emailed me a link. The Escapist article, &#8220;The Broken Economy Is Your Fault,&#8221; rightly points out that the economics of video game RPGs are broken. The author suggests that, unfortunately, they probably can&#8217;t be fixed. As Kai wrote, &#8220;I see [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2010/02/being-realistic-about-virtual-loot</link>
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		<title>The Very Definition of an RPG</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s something very funny about pledging to do more blogging right before finals start at your new job as an assistant professor. Something had to take a back seat, though—and you didn&#8217;t think it would be video games, did you? Of course not. Fortunately, video games are what bring me back to blogging: I&#8217;ve just [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2010/02/the-very-definition-of-an-rpg</link>
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		<title>The Failings of &#8220;Forced Failure&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[By forcing a player to do unpleasant things, a video game can encourage a player to reflect critically on those actions. As I&#8217;ve written about on Geek Studies and elsewhere&#8212;and as others have put quite well too&#8212;&#8221;forced failure&#8221; scenarios in games allow for new avenues of meaning, new emotional responses from media that pure spectatorship [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2009/12/the-failings-of-forced-failure</link>
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		<title>Encouragement vs. Reward</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Over the last several posts on storytelling in gaming I&#8217;ve written (1, 2, ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2009/11/encouragement-vs-reward</link>
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		<title>Encouraging Ourselves to Death</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This post continues a loosely-linked series of posts (including this, this, and this) on how we can find narrative meaning in replayed games. You can re-watch a favorite DVD again and again, but it&#8217;s tricky to replay an old game and still enjoy it for the story because the enjoyment of story is so linked [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2009/11/encouraging-ourselves-to-death</link>
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		<title>A Game of &#8220;Find the Story&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As I discussed in my previous post, games can be played with attention to appeals offered by immersion in story and appeals offered by a sense of mastery, but we tend to see more attention to the latter when in the way games are designed to be played and replayed. Once you&#8217;ve mastered the skills [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2009/11/a-game-of-find-the-story</link>
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		<title>The Rumors of My Defense Have Been Greatly Exaggerated</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s more than a little embarrassing to note that my most recent post before this one was the second part of a three-part series begun in early August. There is a reason, of course: I started the series in the window of time between turning in my dissertation to my committee and going to defend [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2009/11/the-rumors-of-my-defense-have-been-greatly-exaggerated</link>
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		<title>New Game Minus</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There should be a term for the first time you play a story-focused game, before you really get the hang of how to decimate all your enemies, before you know what&#8217;s going to happen in the plot, before you fiddle with the &#8220;moral choice&#8221; mechanics just to laugh at how big a jerk the protagonist [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.geekstudies.org/2009/08/new-game-minus</link>
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